Top writers critic wants to see at Miami Book Fair

And despite all the attention, George Bush isn't one of them.

November 14, 2010|By Chauncey Mabe, Sun Sentinel Correspondent

George Bush opens this year's 27th edition of Miami Book Fair International today at 4 p.m. with a talk about "Decision Points," the presidential memoir that he clearly hopes will rehabilitate the historic image of his administration.

The fair concludes a week later, at 5 p.m. on Nov. 21, with Jonathan Franzen, whose "Freedom" is the biggest and most controversial literary novel of the decade.

In other words, the fair begins and ends with two of the hottest newsmakers in the book world. And in between comes a seemingly endless array of timely books and the personalities behind them.

"Some years luck really kicks in and we have a lineup like we have this year," says Alina Interian, the fair's executive director. "Other times, it's a bit more challenging. Every year, though, we pride ourselves on a program that is diverse and rich, with something for everyone."

As always, the book fair schedule is an embarrassment of riches, with so many famous and fascinating authors, often scheduled against one another, it's sometimes hard to decide which ones to see.

To give you an idea of how a veteran fairgoer — that would be me — manages all these riches, here's a list of authors I plan to not miss this year, and why. Be warned — there's never a guarantee a good writer will also be an entertaining stage presence, but it's worth a gamble, right?

Wit

John Waters practically invented modern independent filmmaking by directing a series of pictures set in Baltimore starring a 300-pound transvestite named Divine.

Given the success, onstage and screen, of such later Waters productions as "Cry-Baby" and especially "Hairspray," it's hard to remember how transgressive his pictures seemed back in the '70s. "Pink Flamingos," after all, ends with a character eating apparently real dog poop.

But the weirdos, losers and outsiders in Waters' films, which eventually won over more or less the entire country, are endearing, too.

Waters is also a fine nonfiction writer. Reviewing "Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters," his 1987 collection of essays, I suggested he should give up movies and write fulltime. But no one ever listens to me.

Wednesday, 8 p.m. An Evening with John Waters. $10, ticket required.

Graphic novelist

Like most of her readers, I first knew Lynda Barry's work from "Ernie Pook's Comeek," an underground strip that somehow seeped into mainstream attention. It features kids from the wrong side of the track in funny-sad hyper-realistic dialogue that wouldn't be out of place in a Mary Gaitskill short story.

Barry has also produced graphic novels ("The Good Times are Killing Me," "One! Hundred! Demons!"), sometimes with experimental artwork. Her graphic novel/memoir, "What It Is," won the 2009 Eisner Award for best reality-based work, a prize she could credibly take home every year.

Nov. 21, 11:30 a.m.

Kenyan most likely to win a Nobel

In the run-up to this year's Nobel announcements (Chilean novelist Mario Vargas Llosa was the surprise winner), Ngugi wa Thing'o briefly surged ahead in British betting parlors as the odds-on favorite.

Don't bet against him in coming years. Ngugi is not only a fine novelist and playwright, but he also has a dramatic personal story, one related in his memoir, "Dreams in a Time of War." One of 23 siblings, he spent his childhood with a doting mother and a domineering father, fighting for the privilege of attending school.

Educated in England, Ngugi wrote several novels before renouncing English to write in his native Gikuyu. Imprisoned by the Kenyan government for his 1977 play, "I Will Marry When I Want," he wrote his first Gikuyu novel, "Devil on the Cross," on toilet paper.

Julie Orringer and Jennifer Egan had lavishly acclaimed novels this year, yet to the surprise of many critics (including me) they were both shut out from the National Book Award nominations.

In some ways the two writers and their books could not be more different. A noted short story writer, Orringer scored with "The Invisible Bridge," a grand love story set during World War II. What could have been a cheese fest is instead a sharp re-creation of a long-ago time and place that utterly avoids sentimentality.

Egan's "A Visit From the Goon Squad," by contrast, is a fearless postmodernist experiment that casts its narrative — an old-fashioned tale of young rebels bargaining with age — via punk-rock sci-fi tropes in 13 interrelated short stories.